Books
15 Wedding Readings About Nature
The days are long. The sun is bright. We are in the dead of summer wedding season. And summer wedding season means outdoor weddings: weddings in fields, in parks, on mountaintops, and on the beach. Weddings where bare feet are mandatory. I know it sounds like a nightmare, especially if you're a sunshine-averse city gremlin like me. But in the event that your friend or relative is getting married in the great outdoors (or if your fiance has somehow tricked you into an outdoor wedding), it's always good to be armed with a beautiful wedding reading about nature.
You can't go wrong with nature, after all. Yes, it's full of bugs, and yes, it is 100% guaranteed to start raining on you the moment you start walking down that aisle. But some of these quotes about nature and love are so stunning, so perfectly romantic, that you just might find yourself stopping to smell the flowers. Mother Nature has inspired some of the grandest literature of all time (as well as being the fount of all living things and whatnot). You're going to be stuck outside anyway, so you might as well embrace the beauty of nature and love at the very same time (and don't forget to wear sunscreen):
1. I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar, $8, Amazon
2. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass , $6, Amazon
3. Not just beautiful, though—the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me.
—Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore , $11, Amazon
4. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild, $3, Amazon
5. I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
The Price of Salt, $10, Amazon
6. The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another, but they are so distant, so very far apart, that they cannot feel the warmth of each other, even though they are made of burning.
—Beth Revis, Across the Universe
Across The Universe, $9, Amazon
7. I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
― Bram Stoker, Dracula
8. You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart
When Things Fall Apart, $9, Amazon
9. Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.
― E.E. cummings, E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems
E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems , $9, Amazon
10. What are men compared to rocks and trees?
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejedice, $9, Amazon
11. What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
― Jack Kerouac, On The Road
On The Road, $12, Amazon
12. Love me...with all the abandon of a sudden wild rain.
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos
A Thousand Flamingos, $15, Amazon
13. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try.
― Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters
The Beatrice Letters , $15, Amazon
14. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds
Stray Birds, $7, Amazon
15. He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
The God Of Small Things, $11, Amazon
Images: Ûliâ Zigir' / EyeEm/EyeEm/Getty Images, Giphy (16)
